On November 23, Gilles Kepel, Fabrice Balanche, and Olivier Decottignies addressed a Policy Forum at The Washington Institute. Kepel is a professor at the Institute of Political Studies, Paris (Sciences Po), and coauthor of the forthcoming book “Terror in France: The Origin of the French Jihad,” to be …
Read More »Yearly Archives: 2015
ISIS now has a ‘colony’ in an oil-rich Libyan city just 400 miles from Italy
Despite facing a series of military setbacks throughout Iraq and Syria, ISIS is consolidating its control over a key city in Libya less than 400 miles away from the Italian island of Sicily. Over the past year, ISIS has been deepening its presence in Sirte, a city along Libya’s northwestern Mediterranean …
Read More »U.S. fears a clash with Russia over Syria Putin’s airstrikes set up a new dilemma for Obama — and fuel critics of his foreign policy.
Bryan Bender It is Syrian Quagmire 2.0. And in the view of American officials, it is anything but an upgrade. Four years into Syria’s civil war and more than a year into a U.S.-led bombing campaign against the Islamic State terrorist group, the U.S. military now faces a …
Read More »Could an ‘accident’ by Janet Yellen derail Clinton? A likely December interest-rate hike has Democrats feeling nervous, and analysts divided on the economy.
By Bin White The general election is still almost a year away. But much about the economic picture that will frame the 2016 presidential race will come into focus in the next two weeks as the Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates for the first time in …
Read More »NATO made another big move against Russia
NATO foreign ministers invited tiny Montenegro on Wednesday to join their military alliance in its first expansion since 2009, defying Russian warnings that enlargement of the US-led bloc further into the Balkans would be a provocation. In a scripted session at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels, Montenegro’s foreign minister, …
Read More »Germany’s intelligence agency says Saudi Arabia’s ‘game of thrones’ risks tearing the Middle East apart
Germany’s state intelligence agency says competition for influence inside the Saudi Arabian royal family is destabilising the wider Middle East, according to domestic media reports. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), one of Germany’s premier daily newspapers, carries the warning from the BND intelligence agency. According to FAZ, the BND …
Read More »MORGAN STANLEY: Iran is the biggest thing for the global economy since the Berlin Wall fell
Iran is entering the global economy, and some investment-bank analysts are starting to get pretty excited. Most outsiders see Iran as an anti-Semitic Islamic state run by extremists who tolerate terrorism (as long as it’s not in Iran). But Iran is also the last large, modern, educated economy …
Read More »The Changing Face of Europe
Where is leadership in the European Union? Who dares to don its trappings, now that German Chancellor Angela Merkel no longer seems to command the authority she did up until the end of the summer? After the attacks in Paris, and with refugees still knocking on the door …
Read More »NATO Towards Russia: Playing With Matches on Potential Tinderbox
In the wake of the recent escalation of tensions between Russia and Turkey and, de facto, between Moscow and NATO, experts consider if the rhetoric of a hot war between Russia and the West is not “before time?” Political analyst Ian Kearns believes the situation actually reminds “playing …
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